Hardened Magnificent Hide

If you'll be doing this daily for ~3 months for the recipes, it's going to be a lot of leather! Getting through the previous tier was dreadful, but the demands of the new task ahead seem truly malevolent. I'll review what's available and how cost-efficiently it can get done. In order to avoid incomplete or misleading information and save you some trouble, I made a mostly complete breakdown and explanation of how much time and leather/scales it will all cost. The more practical info is highlighted so you can go straight to it. These values assume only 1 Leatherworker.


TLDR/BOTTOM-LINE TOTALS

DAYS: 82 days for every new research

Item breakdown

• All Leather+Mail specs are 10 sets of 5 pieces each (=50) plus each non-set slot with Agility and Intellect versions: 3(Bracers/Belt/Boots) * 2(Leather/Mail) * 2(Agility/Intellect) = 12. Each of these has 1 alternative (with and without Spirit/Hit), hence 12*2=24. 50+24=74 Crafted Malevolent gear, with all variations being identical to the previous tier (Dreadful).
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• Now, 8 ilvl 553 belts and pants will also be available, making it 74+8=82 items to learn. Since [item=98617] are BoP, you need the full 21x for belts or 28x for pants from each single Leatherworker.

MATS: ~8 stacks of Magnificent Hide (82 days/researches * 2 hides = 164)

Saved until 5.4:

• 82 Magnificent Hide plus 82 stacks of Mist-Touched Leather/Prismatic Scale.

Starting at 5.4:

• 287 stacks of Mist-Touched Leather (or up to 82 stacks of Prismatic Scale instead, making it 205 stacks of Mist-Touched Leather) (check the "70x" option at "Leatherworking sources").

DAILY CD:
1x [item=98617] = Hardened Magnificent Hide = 2x Magnificent Hide

WITHOUT DAILY CD, repeatable:
1x [item=98617] = Accelerated Hardened Magnificent Hide = 2x Magnificent Hide + Spirit of War

Why is planning important?

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• It greatly depends on how costly and available Magnificent Hide is on your server, but players can plan for it carefully so that they know what to expect and don't go into the inefficient extremes of having saved too much or too little.
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• It'll be a valuable material/research, by far the most expensive to make out of all the 5.4 profession CDs. Considering how it is both the most expensive as well as the most time-consuming to get all recipes for, a good deal of investment (and probably return) is to be expected.
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• Every other day you might have less leather available or something unusual happens and you need to do it differently. Here are the alternatives you can look up quickly so that you don't miss the CD.
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{SOURCES FOR 2x Magnificent Hide}

Leatherworking sources (less predictable sources detailed further below):

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• 70x Mist-Touched Leather (Magnificence of Leather/Magnificence of Scales + [spell=131865]) => an effective option, provided you maintain enough leather/scales to use your old CD (can use scales you aren't using for anything else). The daily rate at which you use up leather/scales is going to increase 3.5x from 20x a day to around 70x! It's a good benchmark, right in the middle of these 3 sources, with one way costing 30x leather more, and another costing 30x leather less (but a lot slower).
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• 100x Mist-Touched Leather (2x [spell=131865]) => this is the highest cost leatherwise but you can count on it all the time if you have used up your hides.
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• 40x (20x+20x) of either Mist-Touched Leather or Prismatic Scale + 2 days (2x Magnificence of Leather/Magnificence of Scales) => if you want to invest the least you possibly can, and don't mind producing HALF as many of the Hardened, you can just use this CD every day and the Hardened every other day. Basically think of it as getting 0.5x Hardened per day instead of 1x, and ~6 months instead of ~3 for the recipes.
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{SOURCES FOR Mist-Touched Leather}

From scraps:

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• 70x Mist-Touched Leather = 350x Sha-Touched Leather (17.5 stacks; Mist-Touched Leather)
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Optimizing farm at Sunsong Ranch - Tillers:

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• Need Revered to start planting [item=89202].
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• At Exalted (16 tiles) = 48-64x Mist-Touched Leather (3-4x leather per tile) => means that normally, you won't get the full 70x from a single maxed farm.
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• If not Exalted yet or not using all tiles: 12 tiles = 36-48x / 8 tiles = 24-32x / 4 tiles = 12-16x.
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• However, there's a chance that you get Magnificent Hide directly from a single tile! The rate is considered low and random but from my experience you can expect to get it at least once a week on average (using 16 tiles a day).
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• Get 4x more tiles from each lower level character: at level 85+ you can run LFD daily for Tillers rep!
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Spirit of Harmony Vendors [npc=66678] and [npc=66685]:

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• 1xSpirit of Harmony = 20xMist-Touched Leather/Prismatic Scale.
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• You can use any spare Harmonies on any character for this. Check prices on your realm for all items, it can be very worthwhile to do the math. If a stack of leather/scales is going for less, get from the vendor what you can sell/trade for more mats.
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• Go further: use professions to get the most out of your Harmonies. Craft anything that gives you the best profit, so you can buy more leather. Items like the 2x Golden Lotus can be turned into gems/diamonds/flasks or potions.
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• [item=89233] on the farm for the purpose of trading for leather isn't worth it; go with [item=89202], it's on average 75% better at Exalted: 48-64x Mist-Touched Leather vs. 32x (the farm won't give you Prismatic Scale however the vendor does have that option).
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Rare NPCs:

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• [item=87217] can give nearly a stack of Mist-Touched Leather or a Magnificent Hide and 5.0 Pandaria rares have a chance at this. You'll also keep getting some Mote of Harmony. This is random but can work as a bonus.
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• The 5.2 Zandalari (easily soloable Warscouts as well as the harder Warbringers) can all drop [item=94159], with the same contents. They will also drop [item=94158] which sometimes will be the same as [npc=50791]'s [item=87223].
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• Not many people seem to bother with it, but [npc=61848] drops [item=93360] which is like the other green bags, but is a 100% drop. This rare NPC is similar in stats to those at Vale of Eternal Blossoms, hits hard but no special abilities, it's only tricky to pull and takes longer to respawn.
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Skinning:
There's many tips out there but here's one I really like and haven't seen often:

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• Skin [npc=59139]s at Skyrange! They're level 90 (higher chance for Mote of Harmony), and have it all: fast respawning packs and high drop rates. [npc=64309] drop scales too but they're few. If you're alone, you won't run out of packs as they keep respawning. Need to kite to avoid knockbacks and some monkey aggro, but this makes it a fun grind in my experience. If you really want to milk the... goats, go at it with Potion of Luck!

It appears this is taught by [item=100864], not sure where this drops or is bought from yet.

Look at your char at wowarmory.com and go to your professions-tab. Then click on the "not yet learned". After that you select "level" 2x so you got the highest gear you can make on top (item level 553 on top). Count now all the missing to learn items above and include the 458 item level, exclude the world drop patterns from raids.

Cheer, you know now how many patterns you need to learn till you got them all. So calculate how much leather you need etc etc. And remember you learn 2 patterns the day, so divided your total by 2 and you know when you are done. Success !
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Edit: After I learn the last 458 pattern. I can learn now only 1 recipe per day.... SIGH
Edit: Apparently I learn all the scale patterns, so I still learn 2 patterns the day.
Edit: After a while you learn 1 pattern the day, you are out off any old patterns :\